https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/ukraine-the-debaltsevo-plot-thickens
Ukraine: The Debaltsevo Plot Thickens View all posts from this blog <https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/blogs/srdja-trifkovic/> By:Srdja Trifkovic | February 18, 2015 With the fall of Debaltsevo some interesting military-technical questions are starting to emerge. Is the Ukrainian general staff grossly incompetent, or outright treasonous? “A colonel is a rank,” says my source, a former general officer of a NATO-affiliated army, “but a general is a clinical diagnosis.” Ever since Hannibal’s masterful double-pincer maneuver at Cannae it has been the wet dream of field commanders to repeat the feat, to surround and annihilate the enemy in a cauldron. Some ancient strategists, like Sun Tzu, believed that it is better to let the enemy retreat through a corridor rather than bleed it to death, but the concept is alien to the blood-thirsty European mind. As it happens, the Western experience is that – rather than prompt the surrounded force to fight to the bitter end – the envelopment rapidly leads to demoralization and the loss of combat effectiveness of the defending force. Kiev 1941 is the most spectacular example of what happens when an army leaves its flanks exposed to the claws: 600,000 Red Army soldiers ended up in “the bag,” the biggest surrender in history. Sometimes a general will deliberately expose his ostensibly vulnerable pocket to enemy attack in order to lure the foe into a well-defended trap. This is exactly what happened at Kursk in July 1943, when – in its last offensive action on the Eastern Front – the Wehermacht spectacularly wasted countless tanks and men to achieve the elusive feat. It turned out to be a fatal defeat, mathematically predicted by the Stavka. Debeltsevo was no Cannae 216BC, let alone Kiev 1941 or Kursk 1943, but in essence the problem was the same: do you reinforce a potential cauldron while its threatening flanks remain vulnerable? My interlocutor, with no axe to grind in the ongoing fight, says that from the purely professional point of view it was insane to reinforce failure: This ‘strategy’ is reminiscent of Hitler’s obsession with defending all those indefensible Fetsungen, from Stalingrad to the Kurland, Budapest and Breslau, for political reasons. But in the end, military realities catch up with the political vision. Today’s Ukrainian generals were trained in the Soviet military academies over a quarter of a century ago. The doctrine may seem outdated, but still they surely know the score. Nevertheless, just like their colleagues everywhere else, they are susceptible to political pressures which trump professional arguments. The victims are the hapless conscripts. The death squads will get away. The result is that one-third of Ukraine’s battle-hardened troops – up to 8,000 soldiers – are surrendering en masse, or are about to surrender. They could have been safely withdrawn until about a week ago. What is particularly curious is that last August several major Ukrainian units, albeit of smaller size, were surrounded under similar circumstances – and ended up surrendering. It seems that the Ukrainian top brass does not mind sacrificing the hard-core fighters who may prove troublesome to the Kiev regime. The Right Sector’s claim that the Ukrainian High Command is riddled with Russian spies may sound like an ultranationalist rant, but one is left to wonder at the generals’ inaptitude. Debaltsevo should not have been defended the way it was defended. A sober commander would have evacuated it while the exit road was still open. This is a value-neutral analysis of the military score on the ground. Its political consequences will be considered in the days to come. Bizarre: Tony Blair to Advise Serbia’s Prime Minister Srdja Trifkovic’s Interview on RT International https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtZ7WauHQbs <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtZ7WauHQbs&feature=youtu.be> &feature=youtu.be Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a leading advocate of NATO’s bombing of Serbia in 1999, will be an advisor to Serbia’s Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic, who was Milosevic’s information minister at that time. Five years later Vucic edited Seselj’s book which referred to Blair as “that English faggot fart.” In his latest RT International interview Srdja Trifkovic examines this strange development. RT: The chief proponent of NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia could now advise a Prime Minister who was himself an outspoken critic of Tony Blair. What’s going on there? ST: The Belgrade government is almost desperate to continue what is euphemistically called the “European path”: They want to join the EU, even though the benefits of doing so are rather moot. And there are some major obstacles, including the determination of Germany to demand Serbia’s recognition of Kosovo’s illegal independence as a precondition. What is bizarre is that Tony Blair has never expressed any regrets about his support for the bombing of Serbia in 1999, even though his justification for joining the U.S.-led bombing campaign was as false as his reasons for joining Bush in the war against Iraq. In fact, his government and he personally claimed that it was the objective of Serbia to create an apartheid society and to ethnically cleanse Kosovo of the Albanians, which was simply not true. But what is even more bizarre… I mean, one might imagine that Serbian Prime Minister Vucic would want a former foe on board because he wants to influence the powers-that-be in Western Europe. But what is particularly bizarre is that they seem to be blissfully unaware of Tony Blair’s low standing in his own country, where he has been under fire primarily for his role in the Iraq war. Let us not forget that his government published two false report – o ne in September of 2002, which claimed that Saddam Hussein had plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons deployable within 45 minutes of an order to use them, which was complete rubbish. And then later on, in February 2003, his team published a second dossier called “Iraq: Its Infrastructure Of Concealment,” which was also as true as Colin Powell’s presentation… RT: Mr. Trifkovic, you’ve spoken ofd the lack of remorse Tony Blair has shown over the bombing of Yugoslavia, and obviously this Iraq history is well documented as well What is the reaction likely to be inside Serbia to this news? ST: I think it will do nothing for Prime Minister Vucic’s credibility and popularity, especially since the role of the United Arab Emirates in the whole affair is not transparent. We don’t really know who is paying for this – and obviously whoever is paying is expecting something in return. This is all very hush-hush. And in addition to Tony Blair’s very low reputation in Serbia I think that the government is effectively shooting itself in the foot, because this is going to be a liability at home, and abroad it will achieve absolutely nothing, because as I said Tony Blair’s credibility in either London or Brussels is close to zero. RT: Let’s talk now about the funding, allegedly from the United Arab Emirates. Where do they fit in, in all of this? ST: Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic has close contacts with some prominent personalities there, and they were instrumental in putting together a project called Belgrade Waterfront, which is supposed to be a multi-billion dollar investment into a complete transformation of Belgrade into a sort of Abu Dhabi on the Danube. Personally I don’t think anything much will come out of this. But with all sorts of failures on the economic front in recent months, not least the recent failure to sell the major steelworks to a U.S.-based company, Vucic needs some kind of PR coup. He will probably present this through the media – and the media in Serbia are closely controlled by the government, even though they are nominally free – that this is yet another major public relations success for Serbia, and that Tony Blair will do wonders for Serbia’s “European Path.” All of that is just a smokescreen for the fact that this government is actually in deep trouble. Their economic indicators are abysmal. I think that a beleaguered government meeting a former politician whose credibility is very low is a pretty nice fit, in fact.
